Wolverhampton Wanderers are one of the most difficult clubs to face in the Premier League. Since they won the 2017/18 EFL Championship and gained promotion into the first tier of English football, they have been unstoppable. The club also known as Wolves is based in Wolverhampton, West Midlands. The English side is owned and financed by a Chinese company called Fosun International.
The club which was formed as St Luke’s F.C. in 1877 plays its home games at Molineux Stadium since 1889. The stadium has a capacity to host 31,700 fans during a match. The Molineux is also regarded as one of the difficult stadia to visit in the Premier League. The name Molineux comes from an 18th-century landowner. He built a hotel which is now the City Archives building, and the whole area eventually came to be a big park called Molineux Grounds.
The rivals of Wolves are other local midlands sides such as Birmingham City, Aston Villa, and West Brom. Their longest-standing rivalry is with West Brom as they contest the Black Country derby. Wolves are one of the oldest clubs around going all the way back to 1877. The club is enjoying its 65th season of top-flight football this season and this is the club’s longest continuous period in the top tier was 26 consecutive seasons in the 33 years between 1932 and 1965.
Wolves are one of 12 founder members of the Football League in 1888, and they played in the first-ever Football League game against Aston Villa. Wolves won the FA Cup in 1893, but they soon faded from prominence until after World War II. It was in the 1950s that they hit their peak glory days. With Billy Wright as the captain and Stan Cullis as the manager, they won the league in 1954, 1958 and 1959.
The club’s traditional colours are gold and black which is derived from the motto “out of darkness cometh light” with the two colours representing light and darkness respectively. Although the team’s original colours upon formation were red and white, adopted from the school colours of St Lukes, for much of their history their home colours have been their distinctive old gold shirts with black shorts.
The side is being managed by Portuguese Nuno Espirito Santo. He has been in charge since 2017 and has done extremely well by bringing them back to the league. Immediately they gained promotion to the league, Wolves signed goalkeeper Rui Patricio, striker Raul Jimenez, midfielders such as Diogo Jota, and Joao Moutinho among others.
Wolves have a rather modest wage bill considering the fact that they don’t have superstars in their squad. The club has two joint highest-paid players. They are midfielder Joao Moutinho and Goalkeeper Rui Patrício. The two Portuguese international pocket a weekly wage of £100,000.
Moutinho joined Wolves from AS Monaco after the French side won the Ligue 1 in 2017. Also, Patricio moved to England after he spent most of his career with Sporting CP. He made his debut with the first team at only 18 and going on to appear in 467 official games. He won five trophies during his 12-year spell there, including two Portuguese Cups.
Wolverhampton Wanderers F.C. 2019-20 Payroll
| Player | Gross Weekly Wages |
| Jose Moutinho | £100,000 |
| Rui Patricio | £100,000 |
| Patrick Cutrone | £63,000 |
| Diogo Jota | £55,000 |
| Ruben Neves | £50,000 |
| Adama Traore | £43,000 |
| Raul Jimenez | £43,000 |
| Willy Boly | £40,000 |
| Leander Dendoncker | £38,000 |
| Jonny Castro | £36,000 |
| John Ruddy | £35,000 |
| Ruben Vinagre | £30,000 |
| Romain Saiss | £23,000 |
| Ryan Bennett | £20,000 |
| Conor Coady | £15,000 |
